Should there be a female age limit on public funding for assisted reproductive technology (ART)? The question bears significant economic and sociopolitical implications and has been contentious in many countries. We conceptualise the question as one of justice in resource allocation, using three much-debated substantive principles of justice—the capacity to benefit, personal responsibility, and need—to structure and then explore a complex of arguments. Capacity-to-benefit arguments are not decisive: There are no clear cost-effectiveness grounds to restrict funding to those older women (...) who still bear some capacity to benefit from ART. Personal responsibility arguments are challenged by structural determinants of delayed motherhood. Nor are need arguments decisive: They can speak either for or against a female age limit, depending on the conception of need used. We demonstrate how these principles can differ not only in content but also in the relative importance they are accorded by governments. Wide variation in ART public funding policy might be better understood in this light. We conclude with some inter-country comparison. New Zealand and Swedish policies are uncommonly transparent and thus demonstrate particularly well how the arguments we explore have been put into practice. (shrink)

How a group G can know that p has been the subject of much investigation in social epistemology in recent years. This paper clarifies and defends a form of non-supervenient, non-summative group knowledge: G can know that p even if none of the members of G knows that p, and whether or not G knows that p does not locally supervene on the mental states of the members of G. Instead, we argue that what is central to G knowing that (...) p is whether G has an epistemic structure that is functioning appropriately in accord with the action-related purposes of the group, and this structure may include non-agential elements such as devices that retain or process information. We argue that recent objections to non-summative group knowledge given by Jennifer Lackey do not in fact succeed in undermining the view, but do help to clarify the nature of non-summative group knowledge. The main upshot of our response to Lackey’s objections is that groups put their knowledge into action in ways that often differ from how individuals do so, and social epistemologists should be careful to notice these differences, especially insofar as groups often structure themselves by employing various epistemically-relevant devices. (shrink)

Thomas Hurka, in his book Virtue, Vice, and Value, and elsewhere, develops a recursive analysis of higher-order pleasures and pains. The account leads Hurka to some potentially controversial conclusions. For instance, Hurka argues on its basis that some states are both good and evil and also that the view he calls the conditionality view is false. In this paper, I argue that Hurka’s formulation of the recursive account is unusual and inelegant, and that Hurka reaches his conclusions only because of (...) its peculiar aspects. I provide an alternative recursive account which is similar in spirit to Hurka’s but which is theoretically elegant and does not entail those conclusions. (shrink)

This famous decree, which is the earliest Athenian decree preserved on stone, is printed e.g. by Hiller in IG. i. no. i, and with a materially different text by Tod in SGHI. no. II. A small new fragment was published in Hesperia, vii. 264. Restorations continue to differ widely and fundamentally. In Hesperia, x. 301–7, Meritt has discussed recent suggestions, and has submitted his own text on p. 307; on p. 305 is a drawing by Raubitschek of the whole (...) monument on the basis of Meritt's text. (shrink)

The theoretical and practical problems of providing incentives for people's activity in society are becoming increasingly more urgent as the role of the human factor in the development of society grows. In light of modern historical experience, we can see the onesidedness of conceptions according to which the types and directions of activity are mechanically predetermined by conditions external to it, and we can see the necessity of understanding the laws of activity itself in all their complicated dialectical essence. These (...) problems have become particularly important at the present stage of development of Soviet society, when a greater active involvement of the masses and profound changes in social psychology are becoming acutely necessary. (shrink)

The 2013 Rostock Symposium on Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in Aging Research was again dedicated to dissecting the aging process using in silico means. A particular focus was on ontologies, as these are a key technology to systematically integrate heterogeneous information about the aging process. Related topics were databases and data integration. Other talks tackled modeling issues and applications, the latter including talks focussed on marker development and cellular stress as well as on diseases, in particular on diseases of kidney (...) and skin. (shrink)

Yaygın din eğitimi örgün din eğitimin dışında bireylerin dini ihtiyaçlarını gidermek için resmi ya da özel kuruluşlar vasıtasıyla her bireye planlı ve amaçlı olarak verilen eğitimdir. Günümüzde yaygın din eğitimini şekillendiren temel kurum Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığıdır. Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı yaygın din eğitimini cami içi ve cami dışı olarak yerine getirmektedir. Cami içi yaygın din eğitimi ise; vaaz, hutbe ve kuran öğretimi ile yapılmaktadır. Bu eğitimlerden olan hutbe, Müslümanları ilgilendiren bütün konuları ele alarak topluma dini bilgileri öğretmek; insanlarda olumlu yönde davranış (...) değişikliği oluşturmak, hedef kitlenin iman, ahlak ve toplumsal farkındalık bakımından duyarlı hale gelmesini sağlamak için bireylere yardımcı olmaktır. Yaklaşık olarak aynı dönemlerde doğmuş, aynı dönemin özelliklerini paylaşmış, benzer sorumluluklara sahip bireyler aynı kuşak bireyleri olarak tanımlanır. 1990-2015 yılları arasında doğmuş büyümüş bireyler Z kuşağı bireyleri olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Bu kuşak bireyleri interneti kullanma, teknolojiyi sevme, görsele aşina, üretken ve eşitlikçi gibi özelliklere sahiptir. Bu durum Z kuşağının sosyalleşmesinde, yaşam alışkanlıklarında ve öğrenme sitillerinde farklıları beraberinde getirmiştir. Yaygın din eğitim nesiller arasındaki bu farklılıkları dikkate alarak bireylerin kendilerini geliştirmelerine ve bilgilerini güncellemelerine yardım etmelidir. Bu sebeple yaygın din eğitimi Z kuşağının ihtiyaçlarını dikkate alarak farklı metot ve etkinlikleri geliştirmesi gerekir. Bu bağlamda Z kuşağının gözüyle Cuma hutbelerinin nasıllığı önemli hale gelmektedir. Buradan hareketle Z kuşağının Cuma hutbelerine karşı tutumlarını incelemek için Cuma hutbeleri değerlendirilmiştir. Araştırmamız, Z kuşağının Cuma Hutbelerini algılamalarını incelemek amacıyla tanımlayıcı araştırma tasarımı ile yürütülmüştür. Araştırmanın evrenini Konya İli Seydişehir, Beyşehir ilçesinde 14-25 yaş aralığındaki 175 birey oluşturmaktadır. Veriler araştırmacılar tarafından hazırlanan ‘Birey Tanılama Formu’ ve ‘Cuma Hutbelerine İlişkin Bilgi Formu’ aracılığıyla toplanmıştır. Araştırmada, verilerin analizinde IBM SPSS (IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences Corp.; Armonk, NY, ABD) 25.0 programı kullanılmıştır. Araştırma verileri değerlendirilirken kategorik değişkenler için frekans dağılımı (sayı, yüzde), sayısal değişkenler için tanımlayıcı istatistikler (ortalama, standart sapma) kullanılmıştır. Araştırmaya katılan katılımcıların yaş ortalamaları 17.04’dir. Katılımcıların çoğunluğunun lise öğrencisi olduğu görülmüştür. Araştırmada Z kuşağının Cuma hutbelerine katılım sağladığı, hutbelerden umut bekledikleri, olumlu yönden etkilendikleri görülmüştür. Ancak Cuma hutbelerindeki konuların yerel ve güncel konuları ele almadığı ifade ederek anlatılan konuların hatırlamadıkları, aynı konuların tekrar ettiği, gençlere yönelik olmadığına ulaşılmıştır. Ayrıca hutbelerin sunumu, süresi ve imamların yaklaşımlarından dolayı problemler yaşandığı tespit edilmiştir. (shrink)

nec iuvenis sororis suae mortem tam miseram et quae minime par erat inlatam aequo tolerare quivit animo, sed … exin flagrantissimis febribus ardebat, ut ipsi quoque iam medela videretur esse necessaria. This is the text of the passage describing the reaction of the young man at the news that his beloved sister has been murdered flagris and titione candenti inter media femina detruso as it is transmitted by the Florentine MS. With the few exceptions which I discuss below, the vast (...) majority of editors accept the text of F, betraying resignation before a paradosis that can hardly seem genuine, since it can be maintained only by forcing both word order and syntax. Editors either refer quae to mortem, assuming an ellipsis of ei in the relative clause and taking par as ‘fitting’, or refer quae to soror, assuming an ellipsis of in eam and taking par as equivalent to digna. (shrink)

Two classic learning situations are critically reviewed and interpreted from a synergetic point of view: human learning of complex skills, and animal discrimination learning. Both show typical characteristics of nonlinear phase transitions: instability, fluctuations, critical slowing down and reorganisation. Plateaus in the acquisition curves of complex skills can be viewed as phases of arrested progress in which a reorganisation of simple skills is necessary before their integration into complex units is possible. Fluctuations and critical slowing down are expressed in instances (...) of "vicarious trial-and-error," which describe the oscillating behavior of rats at a choice point that is shown only just before discrimination learning is completed. It is concluded that education might pay more attention to the role of individual learning rhythms. (shrink)

The paper addresses the use of heterogeneous ensembles of intelligent unmanned vehicles in such a perspective field of innovations as an unmanned fishery. The issues of joint activity of unmanned vehicles of different types in fishing operations based on intelligent technologies are investigated. The “smart fishing” approach based on the joint fishing operation model is proposed. The operational framework that includes missions, roles, and activity scenarios embedded in the discretized spatial model is presented. The scenario activities are considered as the (...) sequences of pentad that determine executing specific functions concerning the specified waypoint, timepoints, and the states of vehicles. The definition of the plan as the scenario prototype that needs adjusting to the conditions of the situational context is proposed. The coordination problem regarding the joint activities of the unmanned vehicles and their scenarios is defined and the coordination framework based on the distributed common board model and coordination primitives is presented. The prototype of the intelligent scenario-based system including the implementation of both operational and coordination frameworks developed for the control of unmanned vehicles is described. This system makes unmanned vehicles capable to absorb all the latest advances in intelligent technologies to perform smart fishing operations jointly in a large heterogeneous group. The proposed approach to smart fishing using intelligent technologies makes it possible to detach fishermen from the fishing activities dangerous to their life and health, to reduce significantly poaching and illegal fishing, to increase the overall efficiency of fishing operations, and even to save the marine ecosystem. (shrink)